Early in the second quarter of 2006, a high school Fil-Am student in the U.S. by the name of Gabrielle Molina wrote me, asking questions about my poetry. Since she never bothered to answer back after I had answered all her questions, I may as well share these answers with the world. Here it is:
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Gabrielle, your teacher replied promptly, but I haven't had the time to answer your questions till now.
Let me answer your first and third questions first:
Why do I write? I write poems out of emotional need, essays out of a desire to share ideas, and short stories out of an urge to explain the phenomenon of life vis-a-vis people. My training in literature has taught me to focus on the particular and specific, at the same time drawing universal lessons from them. As you may have seen, I have written more poems than essays, and short stories least of all. But I hope to write more short stories someday.
As you can see from the list of my favorite poems [see links below], though I write socio-political poems, my favorites have nothing to do with content, but rather with poetic style, with a preference for the lyrical.
Now, that brings me to your second question. What are my favorite techniques, you ask? Maybe I don't use my favorite techniques too often, eh? My belief is that poetry boils down to three inextricably-linked properties: sound (or rhythm), imagery, and tension. Poetic sound, to me, comes not only from rhythm, but from assonance, alliteration, as well as internal and external rhyme, with a preference for internal rhyme. Those are the techniques I use in my poetry. Of course, I don't always manage to pull it off, but there.
For a longer exposition on my poetics, you may want to read Pinoy Poetics, edited by Nick Carbo. I have an essay there entitled "The Poetics of Clarita Roja."
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The "period poems" (blue, red, purple and plain period) are from my collection Journey: An Autobiography in Verse (1964-1995) published in 1996 by the University of the Philippines Press.